Craig Ruttle/ AP
More recently, on Dec. 25, 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to succeed where Richard Reid failed—by smuggling explosives onto a plane and exploding them to down the aircraft. Abdulmutallab, like Reid, should never have been so easily allowed to board the plane. He bought his ticket with cash and checked no luggage. More seriously, his own father was so worried about Abdulmutallab’s growing Islamist militancy that he reported it to the CIA at the American Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, the month before his son attempted to bomb the plane. This resulted in Abdulmutallab’s name being added to the National Counterterrorism Center’s database, but not to the U.S. no-fly list, nor was his U.S. visa revoked.
Fortunately, passengers on the plane were vigilant where security officials were not. When Abdulmutallab ignited his bomb, which had been sewn into his underwear, they tackled him. He was handcuffed to his chair, with second-degree burns to his genitals, and is now in a Michigan jail.
The terror plot that, had it been successful, almost certainly would have resulted in more victims than anything attempted since 9/11 was—unlike the shoe and underwear bombers—thwarted by diligent intelligence work. In August 2006, British police arrested some two dozen suspects and revealed a plot to blow up at least 10 airliners flying between the United Kingdom and Canada and the United States. The investigation involved extensive surveillance and hundreds of police and intelligence officers. But chances that it would be discovered were inevitably increased by the plot’s complexity.
This perhaps explains the apparent simplicity of the attempted car bombing in Times Square. The bomber wasn’t sophisticated enough to design a bomb that worked. But in packing a car with crude explosives and driving to his target he avoided airport security and took fewer risks that might have tipped off authorities.
George Michael, a political science professor at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise who has written on Islamist terrorism in the United States, argues that increased security measures since 9/11 have made it more difficult for terrorists in the United States to organize internationally and plot elaborate acts of brutality. “This notion of leaderless resistance or lone-wolf terrorism, that’s really been the trend now for quite some time,” says Michael. “We see people who might have loose ties to organizations but we don’t really see terrorism in an organizational context.”
It is still too early to know what, if any, ties Faisal Shahzad, the alleged Times Square bomber, had with other jihadists or with terrorist groups abroad—though officials in Pakistan have reportedly made arrests in connection to the plot. But Michael’s description matches that of Nidal Hasan, a U.S. Army major who shot and killed 13 of his fellow soldiers at the Fort Hood military base in November, wounding at least 30 others.
There is no evidence that Hasan belonged to a terrorist group or had trained at terrorist camps abroad. He had, however, communicated with and praised Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni-American Islamist linked to al-Qaeda.
Fittingly, U.S.-born al-Qaeda spokesman Adam Yahiye Gadahn recently praised Hasan for his lone-wolf approach to terrorism, saying Hasan “has shown us what one righteous Muslim with an assault rifle can do for his religion and brothers in faith.” Gadahn called him “a pioneer, a trailblazer and a role model who has opened a door, lit a path and shown the way forward for every Muslim who finds himself among the unbelievers.”
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